With their album "Turn the Sky", Garlands embark on a psychedelic trip through various worlds of time and space. Based on a soundscape between shoegaze, dream pop and kraut, the two musicians Catharina Rüß and Sui Kemmer take on a journey in which they cross the depths of the oceans as well as the vastness of the universe and climb icy mountain heights. 

Particularly characteristic for the duet are the harmonic vocals that meander through fuzz atmospheres, walls of guitars, distorted flutes, synths and piano spheres. The two musicians write songs inspired by artists as diverse as the Velvet Underground, My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3, Sonic Youth, Lush and Stereolab, Can and Neu!, but also Bach and Ravel, whose influences they weave into their own sound cosmos. Overall, the album collates several images and lines, sound patterns and space in ways that feel simultaneously organic and coherent.

For the recordings of the songs, the band teamed up with musician friends. Over the course of the eight tracks, Garlands lead us through different nocturnal worlds and drift through various facets of space. "Sui and I are fascinated by astrophysics. This is also reflected in our songs, in which the universe sometimes proves to be a place of longing and sometimes a realm of dark forces,” says Catharina. 

The album consists of two parts “Turn The Sky” and “Condor”.

During the pandemic, Garlands produced their second EP "Turn the Sky" at a friend's studio (Rajko Lienert, Sound Unlimited Studio) in Erfurt. The opening song unfolds an intense effect of fuzz, wavy, water-like streams, overlapping voices as instrumental loops that rise and fall. Some field recordings can also be found in the record's sound layers, as well as allusions to well-known phrases of pop culture such as Lou Reed's "sattelite", which appears in the dreamy song "Phone Icons". While this is about digital techniques for overcoming distances in relationships, "Delete the Mars" proclaims a rejection of any romantic longing. "There are situations in which you simply can't stand the romance of star narratives anymore, so you want to numb yourself, draw a curtain in front of all the stars and delete Mars as a male planet of war and megalomania at the same time," says Catharina.
In "Polar Zones", Garlands finally put an end to all lamentations, briefly looking back into the abysses of the past in order to go forward and celebrate themselves as the allies they have become.

The EP "Condor" was recorded before the pandemic in the band's own studio in Hamburg Altona, which they had shared with the band Die Sterne, among others.

The eponymous song alludes to the film "Three Days of the Condor". From a female gaze perspective, a male sleeping beauty is sung about while at the same time love is reflected as projection and vagueness. In "Dark Matter", psychedelic whir of doom drones announce fatal forces of attraction. "If the Pharma suits you" is a meditation on the consequences of drug addiction. The lyrics were written by Rick McPhail (guitarist of the band Tocotronic), with whom Catharina worked for several years in his band Glacier of Maine. The last track “Mark's Song” is dedicated to a deceased friend of Sui's. "Mark was the drummer in my first band. The song starts as a lullaby and builds into a noise cascade that expresses the sound he loved," Sui explains.   

FFO: Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Spaceman 3, Stereolab, Lush, Bach, Beach Boys, Brian Eno, Phil Spector, Can